


Other Lives

by bomberqueen17



Series: Other Plans [2]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: A/U, Alternate Universes, Barebacking, M/M, carefully considered unsafe sex, past sexual abuse of a minor, t/w for discussion of past non-con, t/w past sexual violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-06
Updated: 2014-10-13
Packaged: 2018-01-23 19:13:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1576457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bomberqueen17/pseuds/bomberqueen17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John starts his new part-time job at the SGC.<br/>Predictably, he touches something that gets him into trouble.<br/>Can he figure out what's real and what's not? Can he use the knowledge he gains to help the SGC find Atlantis?<br/>Can he deal with confronting what he might have been, in another life? </p>
<p>This is the immediate sequel to Other Plans. While I attempt to have most of my works readable as stand-alones, this one may not work so well if you haven't read OP. To sum up, though, OP is 100,000 words of an AU where John quit the Air Force and had a kid, then got divorced anyway. He's working as a cop, and falls in love with his downstairs neighbor Rodney, who he discovers semi-accidentally works with alien technology. They discover John has the gene and immediately recruit him part-time to the SGC (he's keeping his day job). </p>
<p>Also, John's dad is an asshole.</p>
<p>Note on warnings: There is no non-con or sexual abuse of a minor *in* this story, but there is discussion of it happening to a character in the past. Kids might get a bit traumatized in the story, but they're not getting molested on-screen, as it were.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Plot Devices

**Author's Note:**

> Much thanks to popkin16, innogen, and dragonflower1 for crucial feedback on whether to split up the story or not!

 

The little Japanese woman greeted him effusively. “I also have the gene,” she said, ushering him into the lab, “but I am not very adept, and sometimes, well, I am afraid.”

“Ah,” John said, “you’re, uh,” he snapped his fingers, trying to remember, “Kusanagi.”

“Yes,” she said, pleased, “but call me Miko, please.”

“Miko,” he said. “Then call me John.”

“Dr. McKay’s reports said that you frequently can get feeling before you touch objects,” Miko said. “Sometimes this feeling give you warning?”

“Yes,” John said. “There were a couple of devices I just sort of knew not to touch.”

“Ah,” she said, looking distressed, “General O’Neill say the same. I never get this warning, and so sometimes I touch object and it hurts.”

John nodded slowly. “Ah,” he said. “Yes, I see how that could be a problem.”

“I much rather have you touch first?” she said, a little slyly. 

“Well,” he said, “if I didn’t get warnings, I’d object, but as it happens, I do, so I don’t really mind.”

“As long as you get warning,” she said. “I do not want you to get hurt like I do. It has been very unpleasant.”

John nodded again. “I’ll be careful,” he said. 

“Once you have initialized devices, many work for anyone,” she said, “and those that do not, I can keep initialized. But I am not strong enough to receive warning, usually.”

“Gotcha,” he said. She introduced him around the lab— a little Czech guy with giant glasses was named Zelenka, there was a Russian woman named Kolesnikova who didn’t look like much but had a really sexy kinda-Lauren-Bacall (only with an accent) voice, and a young American woman named Simpson with a sharp demeanor. 

“We have assembled a collection of things we would like you to try to initialize,” Kolesnikova said, “which would make Miko very happy indeed, but first I have to ask you one question.”

“You can ask,” John said, “but I’m not promising you anything.” He had an inkling what it would be. 

“I worked with Rodney McKay for nearly a year in Siberia,” Kolesnikova said. “And I won’t say I didn’t like him. But he’s very difficult to get along with. What is your secret?”

John bit his lip, trying to decide on what would be the most entertaining answer. “If I told you,” he said, “I’d have to kill you.” The scientists all made various faces of annoyance, so he added, “but off the record, it rhymes with Horatio.”

The native English speaker was not the one to get it. To everyone’s surprise, or at least confusion, it was Zelenka who snorted and dissolved into giggles. “If you do not know, I do not tell you,” Zelenka said primly, collecting himself. 

John shrugged elaborately, and Kolesnikova told Zelenka he was an insufferable little prick in Russian, to which Zelenka merely replied with a laugh. John decided to pretend he didn’t speak Russian, for now, just to see how things shook out, and let Kolesnikova lead him over to the lab table. 

Out of nowhere Simpson suddenly let out a shriek of laughter. “Oh,” she said, “oh, I get it.”

“And you guys are all geniuses?” John asked, raising an eyebrow. 

“Not exactly my area of expertise?” she said, tilting her head, and John blinked for a second before realization hit him. 

“Ah,” he said. So he wasn’t the only queer in the SGC. Good. 

“I have arranged them left to right in decreasing order of how interesting we predict they will be,” Kolesnikova said, a mite grouchily. “These are the ones not O’Neill or Kusanagi has attempted to initialize yet.”

“Gotcha,” John said, and put his hand out over the first one, waiting to feel the telltale tingle. Nothing so far. He moved his hand closer, concentrating. 

“Fellatio,” Simpson was saying to Kusanagi. 

“Excuse me?” It was Carter’s voice. John turned around. She’d just walked in the lab door and was standing there blinking at Simpson.

“I don’t know that word,” Kusanagi was saying. 

Carter looked at John. “What are you teaching them?”

“I didn’t say a damn thing,” John said. 

“It’s oral sex,” Simpson said, helpfully pantomiming with her hand in front of her open mouth, “when you do it to a man specifically.”

“I didn’t need to see that,” Carter said. 

“Shouldn’t’ve looked,” Simpson answered cheekily. 

“Oh,” Kolesnikova said, and looked at John. “But we tried that and it didn’t work.”

“I don’t want to know,” Carter said, waving her hands over her head. “Jesus, Major, I leave you with the scientists for _one morning_.”

“I’m not doin’ anything,” John said, spreading his hands defensively. He turned back to Kolesnikova and said, “What do you mean you _tried that_?”

“I mean we tried to set him up with girlfriend,” Kolesnikova said disgustedly. “And we tried boyfriend too, but I admit quality of potential applicants was not exactly—“

“Really, stop,” Carter said, not in time to prevent Kolesnikova from making an up-and-down gesture at John, obviously comparing him favorably with the Russian applicants. “Really.” Everyone obediently stopped talking and looked at her. She grimaced. “We’re not talking about McKay, are we?”

“Of course not,” John said. “We’re touching Ancient devices.”

“Fellatio doesn’t work on them either,” Kolesnikova pointed out. 

“Stop,” Carter said. “Just. Stop.”

John picked up the device, finally, and thought _on_ at it a couple of times, then _yes_ , then _activate_ , then _initiate_ , then _come on you piece of shit_ , and nothing did anything. “Broken,” he said, and put it back down. “No juice at all. I got nothin’.”

“An inauspicious beginning,” Carter said. “Well, I was just coming to make sure you found the right lab, and all.”

“Could’ve been more inauspicious,” John said, and moved his hand to the next piece of tech, feeling for a tingle. “I know how badly this can go.”

“Yeah,” Carter said with a laugh, “one of those things once threw Jack across a room.”

No warning tingle, no feeling of anything, so John reached down and picked up the tiny circuit-board-lookin’ thing, palm-sized— 

 

 

John sat up suddenly, suffused with a sense of urgency. “No,” he said. Then he paused, and blinked, and a profound feeling of disorientation broke over him like a wave. “Where the fuck am I?” he asked, as it receded. 

Sam Carter was standing next to him. He was lying on a gurney in the SGC infirmary. “Got it yet?” she asked, watching his expression. 

“How’d I get here?” he asked. He had been— somewhere. He’d seen— things. A city. Spires. Gold against a blue ocean. An open event horizon. A white face with sharp teeth and dark hollow eyes. 

“You touched one of the devices in the lab and passed out,” Carter said wryly. “You’ve been out nearly five minutes, long enough for us to get you here and establish that there’s nothing wrong with you.”

Five minutes. John shook his head. “I’ve been gone for years,” he said, but even as he said it, it didn’t make sense. Images were still swirling around in his mind, looking to attach themselves to things. A glass dome surrounded by ice and snow. A space-scape, littered with distant ships, some spewing fire as atmosphere vented from damaged hulls. 

“I should hope not,” Sam said. “I was just about to call McKay and admit that we’d broken you, so I’m glad you’re back. The device still seems to be totally inert, by the way. Miko touched it, before anyone could stop her, but it didn’t do anything to her.” 

Breathtaking mountains that John remembered as Afghanistan unrolled in his mind’s eye, and a wrecked helicopter in sand dunes, blood in the sand. John shook his head. No, no, that never happened— he’d heard what had happened to his guys, after he left them, but he hadn’t, he’d never seen it, not like this. “No,” John said, and got to his feet, shaken. “I— I saw,” he went on, but stumbled to a stop, “no. That never happened.”

“What did you see?” Carter asked, alarmed. “Are you okay? They checked you out, said you were asleep and not unconscious.”

“I saw— _things_ ,” John said, tongue-tied. “A— city, the Stargate— spaceships.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how to describe what I saw.”

“Your brain activity and eye movement indicated that you were dreaming,” Carter said. 

John shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. He felt like it had been a long time. He’d seen Rodney, he realized suddenly, he’d dreamed of Rodney, hard-faced and businesslike, armed, with a tac vest like the gate teams wore. He put a hand up to his ear. He’d had a radio headset. There was nothing there, now. It felt— “I feel like I was out a really long time,” he said. 

“Five minutes, almost exactly,” Carter said. 

“Five minutes,” he said. He let his hand fall from his ear, smoothed it down his chest to his stomach. He was still wearing the green base uniform they wore around here, and dogtags, new dogtags, edged in brand new rubber. 

“Let’s take a break,” Carter said. “Go get some coffee. Then I’ll give you more of a tour. Let’s stay away from the devices a bit.”

“Yeah, okay,” John said, and followed her down to the mess hall. 

 

Since he was only staying a week, he was just in the dorm-style barracks onsite. It was kind of spartan, but not unpleasantly so, and John didn’t mind the simplicity. He’d be claustrophobic after a couple of days if he didn’t get to see the sky, but for now he didn’t mind being under a mountain. 

He called Rodney and talked to him a little, but couldn’t bring himself to tell the story of getting knocked out by the device. It would probably freak Rodney out. He’d tell him in person, later, when they weren’t so far apart. 

Rodney joked about phone sex, but John was uncomfortably aware that since cellphones didn’t work underground, he was on one of the facility’s telephone lines, and those were probably monitored. It most likely didn’t matter, but it definitely squashed John’s libido, pretty thoroughly. He hung up after maybe twenty minutes, then read his book for a little while before turning the light off. He thought the day’s excitement would keep him awake, but he fell asleep pretty promptly. 

 

 

He dreamed he was moving through darkened corridors, looking for something, drawn inward in searching, but it was a vague dream, with no vivid details. The only thing he was really aware of was the sense of urgency, that he find whatever this thing was. 

He found it, whatever it was, and then he was back in bed, and there was a device in his hand, smaller than his palm, metal, rectangular, with a smooth solid case adorned on one side with a graphic, overall sort of V-shaped, head and forelegs of a horse, wings spread out to either side. It was meaningless to him. 

He looked up and saw— himself, but not a reflection. He was wearing his green SGC base uniform, and the other him was wearing a black version of the same outfit, sitting in a pose identical to his on the edge of a bunk identical to his. 

“What’re you in for?” the other him asked, in his own voice. Well, it was kind of his voice. Was his voice really that nasal? It sounded deeper, in his head. 

“In for,” he echoed blankly. 

“I’m probably here because I was having a nightmare,” other him said. 

“Oh,” John said. He blinked. “I’m pretty sure I’m just asleep.” Was that weird, to know you were dreaming? This didn’t really feel like a dream, but he knew he had just been dreaming, and he didn’t remember waking up. “I was dreaming, but it was kind of… weird. Not— not bad, though.”

“Indulge me in answering this question,” other him said, gesturing with one hand, fingers spread, not quite pointing, “but did you recently touch anything… Ancient?”

John looked down at the device in his hand. “This thing isn’t Ancient,” he said. He didn’t know how he knew that.

“No,” other him said, “that’s mine. But it’s kind of… a copy of something.”

“I touched something kinda like this today, yeah,” John said. 

“Like, an Ancient version of it?” other him asked. 

“Maybe?” John looked over at the guy. He looked… he didn’t really look any older, but he looked a little more weatherbeaten, maybe, or something. 

“Did it give you a seizure?” other him asked. 

“No,” John said. “Well. I don’t think so. I passed out cold for five minutes and had a bunch of crazy visions.” And then he noticed the radio headset in the guy’s ear. “That,” he said, pointing at it. “That headset. I saw that and— I don’t know, it was just really vivid.”

Other him reached up as if surprised to find the headset there. He pulled it out and regarded it. John had never seen one with that design. “I always forget I have this thing on,” he said. “I wear it pretty much all the time.”

“There was a city,” John said. “And spaceships. And a Stargate. And— and Rodney!”

“Ehh, don’t freak out,” other him said with a grimace, “but I think I’ve seen you before. You’re, like, _with_ -with Rodney, right?”

“Yes?” John said, unable to tell if that was something other-him liked or not. 

“And you,” the other him seemed to pause as if to steel himself. “You have a kid.”

“Yeah,” John said. 

Other him nodded to himself. “I’ve dreamed about you before,” he said. “Don’t be freaked out. I think— I think it’s a long story.”

“Wait,” John said, “are you real? I thought you were… I guess I don’t really think you’re me. What uniform is that?”

“I recognize yours,” other him said. “That’s an SGC uniform.”

“Yeah,” John said. “Today was my first day. They, Rodney works for them, and he had brought work home, and I touched it and they figured out I have some gene or somethin’.”

“And they made you go into the lab and touch stuff,” other him said. 

“Yeah,” John said. “Why, did they do that to you?”

“Not really,” other him said. “But they would’ve. Listen, this uniform is from the Atlantis expedition. Is there one, that you know of?”

“Atlantis,” John said. “No, I—“ Suddenly a flash came to him, and he looked up. “Is that what I saw? A city in the ocean?”

“Yes,” other him said. “That’s where I live. The entire thing is Ancient tech. Listen, I don’t know how long we’ve got here, I don’t know if time means anything here, but I’m pretty sure I know a lot more about what’s going on than you do.”

“Yeah,” John said, a little wide-eyed, “I bet you do. I just figured this was the kind of freaky dream you got underneath a mountain.”

Other him laughed. “No,” he said. “I’m about 99% sure that this has everything to do with a device we found on Atlantis. It was broken, and not working right, but it was meant to do something with alternate universes.”

“Alternate universes,” John said. 

“Oh yeah,” other him said. “You’re familiar with the infinite multiverse theory?”

“Uh,” John said, and rubbed the back of his head. “What, like parallel universes?”

“Yeah,” other him said. “We’re from different universes.”

“That sounds a little…” John trailed off. 

“Yeah,” other him sighed, “but you’re not actually the first person I’ve met this way, and the last time, well, there were a lot of scientists and there’s a lot of documentation. So it’s definitely a real thing. There’s a whole pile of ‘em.”

“You met another you,” John said. “Er, another me. Another… us.” It was the most confusing dream he’d ever had. 

“Well, no,” other him said. “I mean, there _was_ one, but the person I actually met was another Rodney, as it happens. Hey, just a weird aside— what does your Rodney call you?”

“Um,” John said, “he calls me… John, mostly? What, you want pet names or something?”

“No,” other him said. He looked thoughtful a moment. “Anyway. So the thing is, there are infinite multiverses, and of course in most of ‘em we don’t really exist, or exist so differently as to not even matter.” He made a gesture, pointing at himself and then at John, waving his hand back and forth between them. “Somehow this device has been only showing me real close ones, where I’m recognizably me and even had mostly the same childhood. The Rodney I met, by the way— his Sheppard— he called him Sheppard, and my Rodney calls me Sheppard, and it drives me fuckin’ nuts— his Sheppard’s mom was alive, and he’d joined Mensa and never shut up about it. Yours died when you were thirteen, right?”

“Yes,” John said. He remembered that Mensa test. He’d been sort of vindicated and sort of horrified at the result— so he was smart, not just a smartass, but either of them would get his ass beat and he had no inclination to get a big shiny certificate that said, in essence, _“Giant Nerd.”_

“See, I figured. I think you’re the closest universe to me that this device has picked. And I have a theory why this device picked certain universes, and I think it’s because those universes are marked somehow, and I think they’re marked with whatever that device is that you touched.”

“Why?” John asked. 

“Okay, that I don’t know,” other him said. “I’m not a genius like Rodney is, I’m just smarter than I look.”

“You too,” John said, amused. 

“Yeah.” Other him grinned fleetingly. “I just found out I can beat Rodney at chess.”

“I wonder if I can,” John mused. 

“I bet you can,” other him said. “We’re basically the same guy, up until like, 2001 or 2 or so, near as I can figure. Right?”

“I don’t know,” John said, frowning, “what have you been doing since then?”

“I didn’t do anything,” other him said. “You quit the Air Force. I didn’t.”

“I had to,” John said, stung; it felt like an accusation.

“Yeah,” other him said, smiling bitterly. “You had a reason. I never got a chance to have a reason. Get it?”

John stared at him. “Joey,” he said. 

“Yeah,” other him said, looking down and away, like it hurt him. “He never… happened.”

“I’m sorry,” John said, and having it laid out like that, he really was. He really could see that even in his worst moments, he’d rather have Joey than the sky. Even if he barely saw the kid, just knowing he was alive was worth whatever it had cost him.

“You and me both,” other him said. “I never— I really never let myself think about it, is the thing, and then this damn device showed me you, and…” He shook his head, still looking down. 

“But you still get to fly,” John offered weakly. He knew exactly how much of a compensation that wasn’t.

“Yeah,” other him said, not looking up. “I’m a lieutenant colonel, too. Whoop de shit.”

“Okay,” John said, “I _am_ a little jealous of that.”

“Oh,” other him said, “I’m a big fuckin’ hero.” He sounded bitter. “It’s not like I can regret my life choices or whatever. I’m just sayin’, I bet the SGC gives you the sky back.”

“I hope so,” John said. “I was promised spaceships.”

Other him’s head came up, at that, and he grinned, a little unhinged-looking. “Oh man,” he said, “yeah, spaceships. Okay. If you get one of those little tube-lookin’ things, it really looks like a giant piece of ziti, has these drive pods that come out the sides? It’s Ancient, you gotta have the gene to fly it. And I bet you anything Rodney tries to name it a gateship. It’s a goddamn puddlejumper, okay, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Also it’s crazy awesome to fly, and it can go underwater but don’t take it under about nine hundred feet or you’ll be really sorry.”

“A puddlejumper,” John said.

“Yeah,” other him said, grinning fiercely. “And if it’s in good working order there’s probably a thing to the left of the pilot’s chair, a little door in the wall, with a life-signs detector inside it. Those things are damn handy.”

“Gotcha,” John said. He still wasn’t sure if this guy was for real or not. 

“And if your universe gets the artificial gene therapy,” other him said, “and Rodney gets it, don’t be the one to teach him to fly, not if you value your relationship. I about killed my Rodney. He’s not a gifted pilot or a very good driver.”

“He’s driven me around,” John admitted. “It was… an experience.”

“Yeah,” other him said, “times a thousand, when you’re flying through space. So delegate that task.”

“Duly noted,” John said.

“So,” other him said, “back to business. I’ve kind of seen a bunch of other universes lately, and since the device doesn’t actually work right, I’ve only seen them while really distracted and kind of not exactly in control. But I think yours is— have you met a Major Lorne?”

“Lorne,” John said. “I don’t think so.”

“Little dude, like five eight or nine, sandy hair…” John shook his head and the other him trailed off. “Hm. Well, I’m not a hundred percent sure, then. But it was one of the universes where you’re with Rodney and Joey exists. For sure there’s more than one of them.”

“Okay,” John said, trying to wrap his head around that one. 

Other him paused for a long moment. “Joey’s really somethin’,” he said softly, desperate sadness creasing his face. He shook his head. “He’s so great. You’re so lucky.”

“I know,” John said. 

Other him hunched forward a little bit, looking pained. “Aw shit,” he said. 

“What?” John asked. 

Other him wrapped his arms around himself, shoulders drawn in like he was injured. “Fuck. Listen. I’m out of time. I’m pretty sure I’m not asleep, I’m under anaesthetic because I’m in surgery.”

“Did you get shot too?” John asked. 

“Not this time,” other him said. He grimaced. “I just have to warn you. I saw a possible timeline where you get snaked.”

“Snaked,” John said. 

“Gou’auld,” other him said. “They get— you— and they make you kill— Lorne, at least, and I think— you kill— Nancy.”

“I, no,” John said, alarmed. He slipped from the bed, hands out in alarm, hesitating— could he catch him— the other him— or help him in any way, or was that too weird?

“So you gotta—“ other him paused, doubling over. “Ow. Fuck. You gotta be on the lookout. Like, all the time. Research— how they do it— don’t let it— don’t— _fuck_!”

John reached out, and other him looked up, blood shocking red on his white face, lips blue, but before John could touch him, he disappeared, and John was sitting up in bed in a dark room deep in the Cheyenne Mountain complex. 

He turned on the bedside light, totally freaked out, and patted himself down. No, he wasn’t really in the uniform anymore, he was in his pyjamas, the t-shirt and track pants. But… there was something in his hand. 

He opened his hand and looked, and it was the thing he’d touched that had knocked him out, earlier. The thing that had been left behind in the lab. It absolutely had not been brought out of the lab. They had discussed it, and he was going to see about touching it again in the infirmary to see if anything happened. But it had been left where it was, he was one hundred percent certain of that. 

And yet. Here it was, in his hand, in his bed.

Okay, that was really fuckin’ weird. 

 

 

 

After some deliberation, he settled on Jackson as the least likely to throw him out for being crazy. Although, from what he’d gathered, none of these people had any real standpoint from which to call someone else crazy. 

“So um,” he said, by way of a conversational opener, leaning in Jackson’s office door. 

Jackson was blinking blearily at a book, and looked up, owlish behind his glasses. “Mm? Oh, hey. You have the air of someone who is either not settling in or settling in far too well. What inexplicable thing happened to you last night?”

“I _knew_ you were the person to talk to about this,” John said, grinning in satisfaction. 

“About weird shit?” Jackson gestured him in. “I’m kind of an expert. I’m wondering what weird shit you managed to find in the dorms though.”

“I wonder how this stacks up to the usual,” John mused. He fished the little thing from the labs out of his pocket. “So this is the thing I touched yesterday, that knocked me out.”

Jackson frowned. “I heard about that. Why on earth did you touch it again?”

“So here’s the thing,” John said. “We left it in the labs. I was gonna try to touch it again today, under supervision, to see whether it had malfunctioned or what.”

“But you have it,” Jackson said, pointing at it as if John didn’t know that. 

“Yes,” John said. “When I went to bed, it was in the lab. When I woke up, it was in my hand. And my room was locked, so it’s not like somebody was trying to prank me or something.”

“Okay,” Jackson said, “that is weird. We should probably check security footage or something.”

“Fair enough,” John said. “That’s not the weirdest part. Well, it’s the weirdest verifiable part.”

“Oh gosh,” Jackson said. “This isn’t gonna be gross, is it? It’s just, it’s way early and I haven’t really, uh, had time to steel myself.”

“No no,” John said. “Not gross. And it might be nothing, but.” He spread out his hands, shrugging. “I met another version of myself who told me he was from an alternate universe.”

“Oh,” Jackson said. “We get that kind of a lot, actually. Is he still around, or was it a fleeting vision kind of thing?”

“It was a dream,” John said. “And he woke up before I did. That was his thing. He’s apparently been able to see me for a while— me, and details about this, I dunno what it is, reality? Universe? Dimension?”

“Universe is the accepted term, I think,” Jackson said. “I sort of love and hate when we run into those. Because it’s cool and often funny to see how wacky things are in other timelines and such, but the thing is, it’s also incredibly freaky, and usually a really bad sign.”

“Yeah,” John said. “I don’t know if I’m reassured by that or not. Do you guys usually get prophetic dreams or whatever?”

“They’re only prophetic sometimes,” Jackson said. “Usually our alternate universe adventures have involved more… overtly physical manifestations. Yours might actually have just been a dream.”

“That’s what I was sort of hoping,” John said. He waved the device. “Except this thing. So, Other Me said they have a machine in their city that… something something alternate universes, only it was sort of broken and didn’t work right, but he’d seen a bunch of alternate universes anyway including this one. And his theory was that it was, out of the infinite possibilities, showing him universes that had been marked in some way, that had particular similarities to his. And I could see him, now, because of this thing.” He waved the device again. “Like, I’d activated the connection on this end, or something.”

“Weird,” Jackson said. He took the device, looked at it, turned it over. “It doesn’t have any writing on it, so there’s not a lot I can tell you about it. There are no moving parts, only circuitry. Whatever this is, it doesn’t let the user control anything. I mean, I’m an archaeologist not a technology guy but I can tell you that much.”

“The control device is on his end,” John said. “Or that was his theory. Again, whatever it is doesn’t work right, he said.”

“Fascinating,” Jackson said. “So was he like you only with a goatee? We have yet to actually have that happen but I think it would be hilarious.”

“No,” John said with a laugh. “Alas, no. He didn’t seem to be evil either. He had seen enough of this universe to suggest that it had only deviated recently from his, and he even said he and I were pretty much the same guy up until a handful of years ago, as near as he could work out.”

“Huh,” Jackson said. “Oh! So that would mean we have the control device in our universe, too! Did he say where it was?”

“Atlantis,” John said. 

Jackson’s eyes kind of bugged out and he sat up. “Atlantis,” he said. “Did he say where Atlantis was?”

“No,” John said, a little surprised at Jackson’s reaction. “He asked if we had an Atlantis expedition. He was wearing their uniform, he said. It looked just like mine but it was black and he had different insignia.”

“Call him back,” Jackson said, agitated. “You gotta talk to him again. We have to find out where Atlantis is! I’ve been looking and looking and just, we, I thought the Antarctic outpost would be the key to it, but I didn’t find anything there.”

“It was in water,” John said thoughtfully.

“You saw it?” Jackson had stood up and grabbed John by the front of his shirt seemingly without noticing. 

“Uh, kind of?” John said, alarmed. Jackson wasn’t at first glance a particularly threatening guy but he was kind of strong and kind of in John’s personal space at the moment. “Other me said it was basically all Ancient tech, described some Ancient spaceships to me as looking kind of like a giant piece of ziti— do we have any of those?”

“Ziti,” Jackson said, blinking, and only then seemed to notice that he was grabbing John’s shirt. “Oh,” he said, letting go. “Sorry. Um, ziti?”

“I didn’t say the guy was a poet,” John said. “I, um, sort of affiliated with the dream I saw a bunch of stuff. Actually, earlier, when the thing knocked me out, I saw a bunch of stuff. And there was a city floating in water. You’re, uh, you’re looking for Atlantis?”

“There were references to a great lost city,” Jackson said, “an outpost of the Ancients, and we need it, we need to find it.”

John nodded slowly. “If the dream comes back, I’ll ask,” he said. “Doesn’t that… I dunno, is it like time travel, where if you mess with events in another timeline it screws everything up?”

“No,” Jackson said, “it doesn’t, you just have to be careful about entropic cascade failure, but don’t worry about that.” 

“Entropic—“ John began, but Jackson had already moved to the doorway.

“C’mon,” he said, “we gotta talk to Carter about this.”

 

 


	2. Eight Chevrons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A sort of rambly, self-indulgent chapter of John talking to himself.   
> Other John makes references to events in various of the stories of Two-Body Problem but if you haven't read it, I still don't think it's necessary to do so-- things will be explained in this story as well. 
> 
> I was gonna edit this some more but I have a really high fever and can't focus long enough, so do bear with me if there are errors, and let me know gently. ;)

 

This time Other John was wearing hospital scrubs, in an infirmary bed looking haggard with an oxygen cannula in his nose and an IV in his arm. “Oh,” he said. “Hey.”

“Hey,” John said, looking down at himself. He was in the t-shirt and track pants he wore to bed when he wasn’t at home, and which he’d fallen asleep in a little while ago, and was sitting on the side of another infirmary bed, but the room they were in was blank and featureless, like nobody had bothered imagining it. His eyes sort of slid away from it and back to Other John. “You look kinda rough.”

“I feel kinda rough,” he answered. “Hey, do you still have a spleen?”

“That’s complicated,” John said, “but I think the answer’s no.”

“How’d you lose yours?” Other John asked. “We still had it in ’01.”

“Yeah,” John said. “I got shot like, a month ago.”

“I thought you were out of the Air Force,” Other John said. 

“I was,” John said. “Some punk kid shot me in a convenience store holdup.”

“Oh,” Other John said. He grimaced. 

“Did you get shot?” John asked, gesturing at the hospital scrubs. 

“No,” Other John said, “Rodney and I got caught in a landslide.”

“Is he okay?” John asked, with a sharp stab of worry, though it was sort of— well, that wasn’t _his_ Rodney. 

“Lucky bastard got out without any more than a couple of scrapes,” Other John said. “I had all kinds of stupid shit, but I seem to have escaped with part of my spleen at least.” He grinned. “Doc says I have the kidneys of a much younger man, so I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Oh!” John said. “Oh! Before anything else, Daniel Jackson will murder me in my sleep if I don’t ask you where Atlantis is. He was really insistent.”

“It’s in the Pegasus Galaxy,” Other John said. “You need a ZPM and the Antarctic gate, and an eight-symbol dialing address. I don’t remember the details on that, sorry. I can find out. If we seem to be making a habit of meeting like this, I can make a point of looking it up.”

“Zee pee em,” John said. “Will he know what that is?”

“Rodney will,” Other John said, with offhanded confidence. Then he paused. “Er, if your Rodney is as similar to mine as you are to me.”

John blew out through his lips, thinking. “He works remotely for the SGC,” he said. “He was in Siberia two years, he’s still their foremost Ancient Tech guy, but he doesn’t come into the office much since the nervous breakdown.”

“Shit,” Other John said, “that didn’t happen to mine. I mean, Siberia did, but when I met him, he was at the Antarctic outpost in early 2004.”

“Huh,” John said. “I don’t know anything about Antarctica.”

“They sent me to McMurdo,” Other John said. He looked tired. “Hey. You ever friends with a Captain Lyle Holland?” 

“Yeah,” John said warily. 

“He still alive?” Other John asked. 

John breathed out slowly, defeated. “No,” he said. “I quit the unit, they went over, half of ‘em got killed.” Those weren’t the nightmares that woke him, but they were the thoughts that kept him from sleep in the first place. 

Other John shook his head, smiling bitterly. “They’d still be dead if you’d stayed in,” he said. “I couldn’t save ‘em. Torpedoed my career, went in alone after ‘em against orders, the others were dead instantly and Holland bled out while I was trying to drag him back out. Narrowly avoided a court-martial, got exiled to McMurdo to rank-stagnate to death.”

“Fuck,” John breathed. 

“If I hadn’t sat in the control chair and turned out to have the gene, I’d probably have walked out into a blizzard with no survival gear by now,” Other John concluded ruthlessly. 

“Fuck,” John said again, pained, and that was the thing, he could see himself doing that very thing, could see himself going those same places. Even with Joey anchoring him, holding him back, he’d still gone to some pretty dark places, mentally.

“Not much of a retirement plan,” Other John admitted, a little shamefaced. 

“No,” John said. He shook his head. “Not that I can blame you. Shit, they all died even if I stayed in?”

“Yeah,” Other John said. “It helps, to know that, doesn’t it,” he added in a moment. 

“Yeah,” John said, “it does.” He hadn’t realized how heavy that guilt was to haul around. 

“Did you brush up on how the Gou’auld operate?” Other John asked. 

“Yeah,” John said. “That’s mostly what I spent today doing. That, and getting yelled at for not asking you where Atlantis is.”

“Eight-chevron dialing address,” Other John said. “That’s the bit that I remember they were so excited to figure out.” He looked at his hands, fidgeted a little. “So,” he said in a moment, almost shy, “you and Rodney?”

“We haven’t been together a real long time,” John said, wondering how Other John’s relationship with his Rodney was. “We kind of had a rocky start. He’s my downstairs neighbor, and we met totally by chance.”

“Have you had,” Other John said, staring at his hands, kind of picking at the blanket intently, “any other relationships… with guys?”

“No,” John said. “I haven’t— the whole thing with Nancy took a long time to fall apart, we stayed together for Joey’s sake for a couple of years, and it was a disaster, and I hadn’t really dated anybody.”

Other John nodded slowly. “Me neither,” he said. 

“But a lot of other things kind of made more sense,” John said. “Looking back. Not that I regret anything. None of that stuff would’ve been anything but a disaster.”

“Yeah,” Other John said, looking up with a half-grin. “What made you decide to go for it with Rodney?”

“I invited him up because he made me laugh,” John said. “Which wasn’t something I did a lot of. I mean, you’re right that having Joey makes life a lot more meaningful, but I only get him one or two weekends a month, and the rest of my life is kind of… sad. So I hung out with Rodney because he made me happy, and I slept with him because I got drunk enough to admit that it felt like a good idea.”

Other John huffed out a silent almost-laugh. “I met him through work but had the identical thought process,” he said. “That’s funny. I mean, we were trapped in another galaxy at that point with no way to get home and no resupply and also some life-sucking space vampires trying to kill us, but it was about the same apart from that. Even down to the getting drunk first.”

“Space vampires,” John said. 

“Oh yeah,” Other John said. “I suppose I should probably fill you in on that. If you guys find Atlantis, ask the locals about the Wraith, and goddamn _listen_ to them. The Wraith are the reason the Ancestors left the Pegasus Galaxy in the first place. They are some sort of freaky human/bug hybrid and they eat people’s life force through a mouth in their hands. It is precisely as fucked-up as it sounds. I woke them up by accident our first day here and it’s been a clusterfuck ever since; they’re obsessed with making a run at Earth and only their inadequate hyperdrive capabilities have stopped them so far.”

“Whoa,” John said. “That’s… kind of heavy.”

“Yeah,” Other John answered. “There are Replicators out here too. I know the Milky Way has those. Ours are worse. So if you do launch an Atlantis expedition, first off make sure you bring a spare ZPM with you, and second off, understand that there is a lot of incredibly fucked-up shit out here. Atlantis is amazing, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything, but don’t think for a second that it’s going to magically make everything peachy-hunky-dory back on Earth.”

“I will make sure to pass all that along,” John said. “I, um, I haven’t read all the mission reports or even all the summaries yet, so I don’t really have any idea what you’re talking about.”

“You will,” Other John said. He looked John over, a frank up-and-down. “You look younger than me. Why do I feel like an older brother, here?”

“I don’t know,” John said. “I don’t feel that way. I don’t think you look older than me, you just look like you’ve had more shit beaten out of you.” It was true; there were little scars across Other John’s cheekbones like he’d been punched in the face a bunch of times, and he looked thinner, wirier, more weatherbeaten. Plus the whole obviously-recently-injured thing. “So wait, you and Rodney _aren’t_ together?”

“I’m still in the Air Force,” Other John said. “And we have semi-official dispensation against that kind of thing, out here, but I’m the expedition’s military commander, I’m politically vulnerable. So I can’t be as carefree about it as everybody else is. And Rodney’s… my Rodney’s still pretty obsessed with Sam Carter’s tits.”

“Every Rodney in every universe is obsessed with Sam Carter’s tits,” John pointed out reasonably. “I’m pretty sure they’re all obsessed with John Sheppard’s mouth too. He’s a visual guy and he likes what he likes. I don’t really have a problem with it.”

Other John was nodding, but he looked really sad. Not, like, obviously sad, but like he was trying to look impassive. It was weird to see himself making that face. It wasn’t the kind of expression you saw in mirrors or photographs. “Tell me about Joey,” Other John said quietly. He glanced over. “I mean… I saw him, I know what he looks like, I know how old he is and stuff. But is he… what’s he like?”

John nodded, collecting himself. “He’s a good kid,” he said. “He’s a normal kindergartener. Just figuring out how to control himself, how to be a person in society. He’s a little shyer than he should be, a little timid, I think, because of the divorce, but we’re doin’ our best with it and I think he’ll get over it and be a little braver once my work schedule settles down and I can really be there for him.” John half-shrugged. It was sort of impossible to lie to this other self, who was watching him quietly, almost hungrily. “My guilty pleasure is that I like that he’s too clingy, I don’t want him to become too cool to sit in my lap in public, and sleep in my bed because he’s scared of the dark. He’s not gonna be a little kid much longer, he’s not gonna want snuggles or hang onto my leg or even hold my hand. And that’ll be fine, it’ll be good and normal. I can’t carry him around like a baby forever. But I’m enjoying it while it lasts.”

“He’s really cute,” Other John said, but John caught the worried undertone. 

“And very pretty, I know,” John said. “Even prettier than I— than we were. I watch for that kind of thing. Believe me, I’ve already had some good long thinks about how not to fuck up like our dad did.”

“It would be difficult,” Other John said delicately, “to fuck up anywhere near as bad as Patrick.” He gave John a narrow look. “Probably helps that he doesn’t have a chickenshit older brother.”

“I see Dave a fair bit now,” John admitted. “I had his son PJ over for a weekend. It’s different now.”

“Is it,” Other John said. 

John looked at him, considering. “You haven’t spoken to them,” he said. 

“They don’t know where I am,” Other John said. “I’m content to leave it like that.”

“Dave’s all right,” John sighed. “But you’re kind of right, there’s not much redeeming merit to Patrick.” He chewed his lip. “He caught on about me and Rodney and called me a faggot, so there’s that.”

“Awesome,” Other John said. He shook his head. “I haven’t talked to him since before the divorce was finalized.”

“Did you just let him have the house?” John asked, curious. 

“The house? No, I let Nancy have it,” Other John said. “We had a huge fight because I wouldn’t let her pay me back.”

John stared at him. “Dad made me buy the house from him,” he said. “So that Nancy and Joey wouldn’t be homeless.”

“What?” Other John gave him a confused look. “Why? It was a gift.”

John shook his head. “You didn’t care, so he didn’t bother,” he said, disgusted. 

“He made you buy the house he’d given you,” Other John said, incredulous. “For your ex-wife. So she’d have somewhere to live with his grandson.”

“Yeah,” John sighed. “I’m not surprised, I guess.”

“He’s a fuckin’ asshole,” Other John said. “He never bugged Nancy about it, I’m sure she’d’ve mentioned it.”

John nodded wearily. “Change the subject,” he said. 

“Yeah, good call,” Other John said. “So you researched the Gou’auld and the Trust and all?”

“I did,” John said. 

“I had… the thing is, the machine on this end, it’s completely fucked-up. When we found Atlantis it was underwater, and there was a shield holding back the ocean but it had failed in places. So bits of the city got flooded. This machine was in one of the flooded areas, and we’re pretty sure even before that, it wasn’t working right— it looks like they never finished it.”

“Gotcha,” John said. “Daniel’s flipping his shit about Atlantis, by the way.”

“Oh,” Other John said, “I figured.” He laughed. “So this machine, instead of working properly, gave all the ATA carriers on the base seizures. It felt like this thing was ramming nails up into every nerve ending. It was really unpleasant. And in the midst of all that, we all had similar visions. My theory is that the universes it showed us were ones keyed to me and marked with those tags, like the one you touched.”

“And you saw me get snaked,” John said, uneasy. 

“It’s hard to say,” Other John answered. “I saw… The snake, I don’t know where it came from. Nancy? It made you kill her, then it made you go into the SGC, where you killed at least Lorne, probably a couple other people— you surprise-attacked Lorne and stabbed him in the neck, which was kind of grisly. I noted it particularly because he also saw this, he’s a gene carrier and was on the base when the thing activated so he watched this too. You killed Rodney, too. And then you took over the world, pretty much.”

“I’d,” John said, horrified. “No.”

“See, that’s why I’m warning you,” Other John said. “Because that’s awful. The snake was all excited about Joey too because, well, he’s a gene carrier. Strong as you.”

“Fuck,” John said. He shook his head. “You just had the one vision?”

“Yeah,” Other John said. “The machine’s shut down now. Rodney disassembled it and stripped out the interface parts. He reverse-engineered it into that little thing, and gave it to me to help me control my nightmares.” He grimaced. “Do you get those?”

John was looking at the thing in his hands, which he hadn’t had there before, but hadn’t picked up. It had just suddenly shown up there, in between times when he was paying attention. It was the little device again, with the winged-horse logo on it (and he realized now, that triangle shape was one of the Stargate chevrons; he recognized it now that he’d seen the thing in person). “Nightmares?” he asked absently. “Yeah, sometimes. Mostly about the time the helicopter crashed. Gomez.”

“Yeah,” Other John said, “Gomez. I get that one. Some others, too. I, I kind of wake up screaming a lot out here. That’s mostly Rodney’s relationship with me; I wake up screaming and he calms me down. Then, during the day, I save his ass from getting shot.”

John grinned, at that, a little ruefully. “Sounds like a good relationship foundation,” he said. He was turning the device over in his hands. “Rodney made this for you?”

“Yeah,” Other John said, and there was a hint of pleased shyness in his smile. “The casing is salvaged from one of the expedition laptops— that’s the logo, a pegasus, since we’re in the Pegasus Galaxy, get it— and he did a really neat job on the solder. The inside’s all Ancient tech I don’t really understand. But here’s the thing, he thinks it’s just the interface, the whole point is just that it’s meant to influence and be influenced by my brainwaves, and keep me from going into a PTSD flashback.” He glanced up, hesitant. “Do you get those?”

“Rarely,” John said, “but, yeah.”

Other John nodded and looked down again. “But it seems obvious to me, since you’re here and all, that there’s got to be some kind of remnant of the bit of the machine where it interfaces with alternate universes in there. Since I can still talk to you. Only when I’m unconscious or asleep, but this is definitely a two-way interface.”

“It could be just an unusually vivid dream,” John offered. “I mean… Daniel Jackson seemed to think it really was contact with an alternate universe, but how do I know this is really anything more than my subconscious?”

“You’ll know if the eight-chevron dialing address works,” Other John pointed out. 

“Oh,” John said. “True. I don’t have the background knowledge of Ancient tech to have come up with that on my own. And I guess knowing about Atlantis at all is kind of proof on my end, I know they hadn’t mentioned it. You don’t have any proof, though.”

“I bet we can think of something,” Other John said. “Something you could tell me that would be verifiable here, but I’d have no way of knowing. Like, I dunno, current events on Earth?”

“You guys don’t have contact with Earth?” John asked. 

“We do, but only once a week or so,” Other John answered. “And I’ve pretty much been unconscious for two days at this point, so my having any knowledge of anything at all would be pretty unusual.”

“Two days!” John said. “What are you, a sissy?”

“I had a collapsed lung,” Other John said, mock-defensive. “And those butchers took like half of my spleen.”

“I got shot and lost the whole spleen and was only out for one,” John said. 

“Liar,” Other John answered, unconcerned.

“And they miracle-cured me with this crazy healing device,” John added. 

“Ohhh,” Other John said, “I’ve had one of those used on me. It was awesome. We don’t have one on the expedition. Oh, if Vala’s there, say hi.”

“Vala,” John said blankly. “I don’t know a Vala.”

Other John looked thoughtful. “Oh, hm,” he said. “They only met her because she hijacked the _Prometheus_ when it was on its way to relieve Atlantis, so there’s a chance she never made their acquaintance at all in your universe.”

“I’ll ask,” John said. 

“If you meet her, she’s a good friend to have,” Other John said. “The others don’t get her, they just think she’s a con artist, but she’s really just a hell of a survivor.”

John nodded thoughtfully. “I’ll ask,” he said again. “But meanwhile what can I tell you that they can verify that you wouldn’t know?” 

“Tell me something about Rodney,” Other John said. “I never knew him on Earth. Well, I did, but for like, a week.”

John considered it. “Ask him about his collection of National Geographics.”

“I knew about those,” Other John said. “He complains sometimes about leaving them behind but never bothers having them shipped out either.”

John blew out through his lips, considering. “Ask him,” he said, “about the boxer shorts with the kiwi fruits on them.”

“He has those here,” Other John said. “They’re part of a multi-pack.”

“With apples and bananas,” John said. “And he said there were ones with oranges on them but he threw them out.”

“Told me that too,” Other John said. 

“I can’t think of anything,” John admitted. Other John had known his Rodney longer than he had his. It was weird to consider. 

“Well, if we do this again, I’ll get him to give me a question I can ask you. He really thinks he’s stripped anything to do with alternate universes outta that device,” Other John said, fond and amused. 

“You really are with Rodney too, right?” John had to ask. Other John had said no, but every time he talked about him he made that face, and maybe it wasn’t one John made often for mirrors or cameras but he knew what that face looked like, knew what it meant. 

Other John’s face went blank. “No,” he said. “Not like that.” Expressionless. Emotionless. 

“I know not officially,” John said. “But come on.”

“No,” Other John said, and there was an angry little defensive flash in it. “No, we just, we’re that kind of friend.”

John stared at him, letting his eyebrows draw together. He’d never, ever, ever been the fuckbuddies type, never been into one night stands. “ _What_ kind of friend?” he asked.

Other John didn’t answer for a moment. His blankness had slid a little toward sadness. “He— he needs someone who can admit to him,” he said finally. “There’s, there’s a botanist, really pretty, she likes him a lot. I think— if he gets serious with her I— I think he is. I don’t, we’ll, we’ll just be friends.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” John asked, crossing his arms. 

Other John set his jaw, looking away for a moment, then smiled tightly, looking back. “You know fine fucking well what’s wrong with me,” he said, a little nastily. 

“If _I_ could manage to just fucking go for it,” John said, but bit it off. Getting in a fight with himself in a dream was kind of a new level of crazy.

“How long have you known him?” Other John asked. 

“A few months,” John answered. 

“You let him fuck you yet?” Other John asked, and okay, that was definitely a hard mean nasty edge in his voice. 

Stung, John said, “We’ve only been sleeping together like… well, not real long.” But they both knew that wasn’t it.

“Yeah but I bet you’ve fucked him a bunch of times,” Other John said. “And I bet you know him well enough to know how shitty pretty much everyone else who’s ever been with him has been.”

No, John _didn’t_ know that. “What do you mean?”

“Previous lovers have asked him to keep their relationships a secret,” Other John said. “Because they didn’t want to be associated with him. They were ashamed to be seen with him. Sometimes they were just screwing him to scratch an itch, sometimes they liked him well enough but knew that their friends didn’t like him. Sometimes they were just in it to mess with him. At least once, the person who was sleeping with him had been literally dared to do it for the entertainment of their coworkers. People like to fuck with Rodney.”

Suddenly Kolesnikova’s _we tried that_ wasn’t so funny, and John set his jaw. “He never told me any of that,” he said. 

“And you haven’t told him why you won’t let him fuck you,” Other John said. “So maybe you should see to your affairs before you start telling me how to conduct mine.” 

“They’re the same affairs, though,” John said, and instead of defensive he let his tone be gentle. Other John’s nastiness had subsided back into sadness. 

“I doped myself up on painkillers and muscle relaxants,” Other John said. “I was injured anyway, and I’d spent three days in a tiny cell with Rodney, with a couple of broken bones in my shoulder and no medical care, and he’d been an absolute angel the whole time. So once I was on the mend from surgery, I got him in bed and got myself a little high and floaty, and asked him to do me real nice. I recommend it highly, getting fucked consensually is pretty much the best thing ever. And then once I was blissed out on afterglow I told him everything.”

“Everything,” John said, a little surprised. Their history was the same, so he knew what Other John was talking about, but he also knew how deep most of that was buried. 

“Well,” Other John said. “I kind of told him a slightly sanitized version of the POW story, maybe lied a little and said it was only one guy. But I told him about freshman year too.”

“Not the kid stuff though,” John said. It was hard even to reference it.

“There are limits to honesty,” Other John said bleakly. “And I don’t have a kid, myself, so I don’t have that obligation to think about those things.”

“Fuck,” John said. 

“You do, though,” Other John went on ruthlessly. “And people are always like _oh that’s not real, that doesn’t really happen, nobody would really do that to a kid_ , and they dismiss you as being kinda paranoid, and it’s real hard to open your mouth and say _no, it really does happen and I know firsthand_ , because you really don’t want to be that guy. But nobody takes you seriously either way, so… You probably should tell Rodney, though.”

“Or I could just not send my kid off to boarding school,” John countered. “With a piece of shit older brother only too happy to sell him out to bullies.”

“You can’t follow him everywhere he goes,” Other John said. “And you know, he’s really, really, _really_ pretty. And kind of timid and might not be so great at sticking up for himself. If some of the adults in his life know about this kind of thing, they might be better-equipped to protect him.”

“Fuck,” John said. He felt sick.

“Do you ever see a shrink?” Other John asked. 

John looked over at him. “They’ve always been so helpful,” he said, squinting. If Other John had lived the same life until recently he remembered the whole Government-Issued Shrink Situation in ’96 or so. Right after the Horrifying POW Incident, in fact directly because of it.

“If Kate Heightmeyer works for the SGC, go see her,” Other John said. “It’s not like she can fix you, but she can help you figure out what to do about some stuff.”

John laughed, a short humorless helpless laugh. “I am having a vivid dream wherein an alternate universe version of myself tells me to seek psychiatric help,” he said. “This just all got way too self-reflexive.”

Other John looked amused, but resigned. “I’m just saying,” he said. “I’ve spent my whole life being kind of mean to myself, now that I think about it. I’m tryin’ to be nice, for once.”

“Well,” John said. He considered that for a moment. “So you’ve told me how to get to Atlantis, warned me about what we’ll find while there, and warned me about the Trust’s plans for me. Have I done anything for you?”

“You’ve done plenty,” Other John said, half-smiling. 

John raised his eyebrows at him, and the half-smile deepened a little. “Just kiss Joey from me,” Other John said. “And let Rodney fuck you, you won’t regret it.”

 

 


	3. Home Territory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a half-chapter apology for the previous chapter. I forgot some of the bombshells in there weren't already public knowledge because some come from unwritten chapters. 
> 
> So this is just smut. John is being possessive and Rodney's totally into it.

Rodney met him at the door. “What do you mean you found Atlantis,” he demanded. 

John was too busy drinking in the sight of him. He was unshaven, uncombed, but freshly showered, in baggy sweatpants and an old hoodie, hair wet and sticking in all directions and his mouth slanting in a crooked line and he looked like goddamn _heaven_. John slid an arm around him, under his shoulders, pulling him up, and squashed him against the doorframe to kiss him deeply and thoroughly. 

“Who said we found Atlantis?” he asked eventually, once they’d crashed their way backwards, inseparable, down the hallway (John made sure the front door shut by shoving it with his booted foot, not pulling away from Rodney’s mouth, elbow hooked around the back of Rodney’s neck to make sure he couldn’t pull away either), and backward into Rodney’s apartment, and John had taken Rodney down to the couch like a rodeo calf. 

“What,” Rodney panted, distracted, grinding up into John’s hip, leg wrapped around his and hands up under his shirt. 

“We didn’t find it yet,” John said, and dove in for another attack, biting savagely at Rodney’s neck. 

“Carter’s pretty convinced— oh—it’s just a matter of— hhngh— time,” Rodney moaned. “Ohh _god_ do that again.”

“Yeah?” John said, letting up enough to strip Rodney out of the hoodie, pausing to bite at the swell of one bicep below the short sleeve of the worn-soft old t-shirt Rodney was wearing. 

Rodney yelped and laughed, tugging at John’s shirt— and he was still wearing his coat over the top of it— but John pulled away and shoved Rodney’s t-shirt up, nuzzling at his chest, licking at a nipple, biting down on the curve of a broad shoulder. “Oh my god,” Rodney panted, “oh my— c’mon— bed— I’ll throw my back out if we do this on the couch.”

John laughed, and let him up, taking the opportunity to shed his coat and boots. Rodney stood up and unfastened John’s belt, and just the smell of him— mostly shampoo— and the warmth of his body drove John a little crazy. He grabbed Rodney’s arms and manhandled him across the room to the bedroom door, mashed him into the door frame and sank his teeth into his shoulder while he shoved his hand down the front of Rodney’s sweatpants. 

No underwear, and he wrapped his hand around Rodney’s hot, hard erection, tugging demandingly. Rodney whined helplessly, thrusting into his hand. “John,” he whimpered. 

“See anybody while I was gone?” John murmured hoarsely, licking his way up Rodney’s neck to where his jaw bristled, unshaven. “Get up to any mischief?”

“Got caught staring at a barista’s ass again,” Rodney admitted, not really in the spirit of this particular thing yet, and John had only been gone a week and this had been more of the kind of game he’d played with Nancy but he couldn’t help it. She used to tease and torture him with maybes and coy perhapses until he’d wrung at least three or four orgasms out of her. It wasn’t really fair to pick up the same game with Rodney. But the expanse of absence stretched, and John’s territorial instincts were pinging out of long habit. 

“Do I have to win you back?” John breathed in his ear, then bit his jaw. 

Rodney squeaked and writhed and shivered a little, bucking into John’s grip. “Ow,” he said, not actually complaining, “are you marking your territory?”

John lowered his head and nipped at Rodney’s collarbone, then sucked a mark into it and bit again in the same spot. Rodney flailed a little, not trying at all to escape, and dug his fingers into John’s lower back. 

“Maybe,” John said, and pulled his hand out of Rodney’s pants, grabbed his hips instead, and dragged him over to the bed, dumping him onto it facedown and pressing himself up against his back, biting marks into the trapezius muscles at the sides of his neck where it joined his shoulders. “Are you mine, or do I have to make you that way?”

Rodney moaned, shoving his hips down against the bed. John kept his teeth fixed in Rodney’s shoulder but arched his body up away so that he could yank Rodney’s pants down and grope his ass. Rodney writhed, more to spread his legs than to try to stop him, and made a high-pitched sort of keening noise that zinged straight down John’s spine to his dick. 

“Do you want it?” John growled. “C’mon, do you want it?” He pushed down against Rodney, letting himself grind his erection up against Rodney’s ass, pressing his chest into Rodney’s back, moving his mouth to Rodney’s ear. He pushed two of his fingers into Rodney’s open mouth, and Rodney made a really great little noise and sucked on them, tonguing at the tips. 

“You,” Rodney panted, as John pulled his fingers back out and moved them down (surreptitiously putting more spit on them as he pulled them back), circling Rodney’s asshole with a wet fingertip and pushing the other so, so carefully in. “Oh!” Rodney made a tiny, but fervent, jerk back with his hips. “God! John! Yes!”

“Yeah,” John said, “you want it?”

“I want it,” Rodney gasped, desperate, “oh God, I want— I want it.” 

John pushed his finger in, but he knew he really needed to stop and get some proper lube. He wasn’t in deep enough yet to— maybe? He stroked carefully with his finger, but Rodney didn’t make any particularly awesome noises, and he could feel the drag of not-wet-enough skin, so he bit Rodney and pulled his fingers gently out. “You’re so good to me,” he said fondly, and rolled off him, shucking both his remaining layers of shirts in one motion and retrieving the lube from the bedside stand. 

Rodney pushed his shoulders up and raised his head, but stayed where he was, splayed out, legs spread as wide as his half-pushed-down pants allowed, face flushed and mouth slightly open. There were red marks coming up down his neck and along his shoulders, where John had bitten him, and if John’s dick got any harder he might pass out. 

“C’mon,” Rodney said, regaining enough self-possession to be impatient. “It’s not like it’s going to fuck itself.”

“That’s what you want, hm?” John knelt on the bed, knees wide, hips forward, and ran a hand down from his flank to his waist to draw Rodney’s eye, slowly unfastening the top button on his pants. “God, your ass _is_ insatiable.”

Rodney was watching worshipfully, so John made it a little showy, gyrating his hips a little bit as he eased the fly zipper down, running his other hand down the inside of his thigh, pulling the fabric of his BDU trousers taut to show the curve of his erection. “God,” Rodney said, “you’re like porn.”

“Did you watch a lot of porn while I was gone?” John asked, sliding the waistband of his pants down, just a little, taking the boxers waistband down with them. 

“Yes,” Rodney said, staring raptly, and John rewarded him with another inch or so of exposed skin over the waistband. 

“Did you think about me?” John asked. “Or do I have to fuck those other people right out of your mind?”

“Yes and yes,” Rodney said, eyes glazing over as John rocked his hips back and forth, easing his waistband down far enough to pull his cock out over it. 

“You greedy slut,” John said approvingly, and hauled him up onto the bed, shoving him into position with his ass up, knees spread, sweatpants still around his thighs. 

“Yes,” Rodney moaned, “god, please, John—“

“I’ll give you what you want,” John said, “and I’ll give it to you hard and nasty if that’s what you want.” Rodney moaned, wriggling a little, spreading his legs even wider. John slid two lubed fingers into his ass and started finger-fucking him open with no further ceremony. 

Rodney writhed and cried out, shoving back against him. “Oh,” he gasped, “yes, fuck me— do it— so dirty— I’m a filthy slut, I’m your filthy slut, I need you, I want to feel you come.”

They’d interspersed endless weird tests of his gene with more normal physical examinations back at the SGC, and among the blood tests had been disease screenings, so he knew he was definitely clean. He’d thought about it a little when the doctor was going over the results. He’d never fucked Nancy’s ass without a condom, it just seemed… unsanitary. But he hadn’t ever given it more thought than that. And Rodney’s excitement was a compelling argument. 

“You want it bareback?” John asked, stroking two fingers determinedly against Rodney’s by now very familiar prostate area. 

Rodney obligingly squealed and thrashed, managing to be both goofy and incredibly sexy at the same time. He was kind of amazing that way, and it was _so_ hot, especially watching the play of sleek muscles in his shoulders and down his back, the soft hair at the nape of his neck. John had to bite those shoulders. “Yes,” Rodney panted, gasping, “yes, I want— I want to feel it— oh god yes please _John_.”

John scraped his teeth lightly along the ridge of the shoulder girdle bones above Rodney’s shoulderblade. “Yeah, okay,” he said, and kissed his way roughly across to Rodney’s neck, enjoying the hot press of Rodney’s broad back writhing beneath him as his fingers kept working in him. 

The condoms they had were lubed, so without one John already knew he was going to need a bit more lube. He bit his lip, composing himself, as he pushed in— he hadn’t expected that being able to feel the texture of Rodney’s skin would affect him so much, but it was hot, it was really hot. Rodney was making all kinds of happy noises, most of them words, ranging from guttural to shrill, and John reached down with his lube-wet hand and found Rodney’s cock, which had an effect like turning up the volume knob. 

“Oh my God,” John said, grinning into Rodney’s shoulder, “I don’t deserve you.” 

He got himself together enough to give it to Rodney good and hard, stroking Rodney’s cock in the same rhythm, working those gorgeous shoulders over with his teeth— too lightly to break the skin, just hard enough to leave marks that would mostly fade by morning. He was indulging himself a bit, because Rodney didn’t seem to mind, and being territorial and domineering, because Rodney seemed to kind of like that, but even now he was thinking about what his other self had said. Because he knew the guy was right; even without his input he’d known that. He’d always liked a varied sex life, and while a lot of his sexual relations with Nancy had been like this, there had been plenty where she’d pushed him around instead, and he’d liked it. 

“John,” Rodney was moaning, most of his words having given away to incoherence, “oh, yes, God, ohh!” He was palpably close, trembling deep in his body, his breath gone shallow and rhythmic, and John pressed his cheekbone against his shoulder and sped up a little. They were pressed together skin to skin, and John was inside Rodney’s body, naked, nothing between them, skin sliding against skin, and it was almost more than John could take.

“Yeah,” he said, and Rodney cried out, arching beneath him, clenching around him, making a whole bunch of noise. He fucked him through it, wringing out every last cry and spasm until Rodney was panting and limp beneath him. By then John was close, so close his skin felt electrified, so close he could hardly breathe. 

“I gotta,” he said shakily, hips uncoordinatedly pressing in, “ohhh, wow—“ 

“Yeah, c’mon,” Rodney said indistinctly, and moaned some, did some writhing, worked at John’s cock with his beautiful slick, squeezy ass, and John’s whole spine yanked him upright and shoved him all the way into Rodney as he let go. 

“Yes,” he said, dazed and blinded as orgasm shorted out every one of his nerve endings, “aughh— Rodney—“ 

He might have made some other noises or said some things, he wasn’t sure. He fumbled around uncoordinatedly for a bit, managing to pull stickily out of Rodney and curl around him, pulling him down onto the bed and shoving his face in the hollow of his neck. John licked repentantly at a mark on Rodney’s shoulder. 

“Wow,” Rodney said, panting. “That was really fuckin’ hot.”

John nuzzled up under Rodney’s ear, wrapping his arms around his torso more tightly. “Mine,” he said. 

Rodney laughed softly and found his hand, twining their fingers together against his chest. “Yes,” he said. 

 


	4. Something Go Right

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm still here. Another short chapter, but there's no help for it. I've lost momentum! But the story's still alive.

 

John got out of the shower and Rodney was brushing his teeth. He toweled himself off, not openly acknowledging that Rodney was watching, but sort of putting on a little show anyway. Rodney finally turned away to rinse and spit, and John wrapped the towel around his waist and stepped over to drop a kiss onto one of the marks on Rodney’s pale shoulder. 

“You really did a number on me there,” Rodney said, making a face at him in the mirror. 

“Sorry,” John said, unrepentant. 

“You’re not sorry,” Rodney said.

“Well,” John said, nuzzling along the back of Rodney’s neck, enjoying the tickle of the soft hairs of the nape of his neck, “no blood, no foul.”

Rodney laughed, and leaned back into John’s grip, watching him in the mirror. “Did you find an Ancient device that turned you into a werewolf, or something?” Rodney asked. 

John snorted, knowing it would make Rodney shiver ticklishly. “No,” he said. “But. I did discover one that seems to connect in some way to an alternate universe.”

Rodney’s head snapped up, and he met John’s eyes in the mirror. “Alternate universe,” he said. 

“Yeah,” John said. “One where Earth had sent an expedition to Atlantis.”

“Really,” Rodney said, staring raptly in the mirror. He was adorable under the incandescent lights around the mirror, pale and a little fuzzy, skin like new cream, freckled here and there, and wearing only the infamous kiwi fruit boxer shorts.

“In that reality you still have those boxers,” John said. 

That was finally enough to get Rodney to twist around to face him directly. “How the hell would you know that,” he said. 

“I only caught a couple of glimpses of that other reality,” John said. Now that Rodney had broken the contact, there was nothing keeping him in the bathroom, so he walked out into the kitchen where the coffeemaker was finally gurgling to a conclusion. “I saw a star-shaped city floating in an ocean, I saw— oh, I saw ziti-shaped spaceships, though really, they were more like penne, that’s cut on the bias,” and he made a slanting gesture with his hands before reaching up to the cabinet where Rodney kept his coffee cups, “I saw you in full tac gear which let me tell you was pretty hot, I saw what I know now is a Stargate event horizon, and I saw some super creepy aliens that other-me assures me are ‘freaky space vampires’, so that was cool.”

“And you saw my fruit boxer shorts,” Rodney said, standing in the doorway of the kitchen with Cosmo twining around his feet and yowling. 

“No,” John said. “So the visions part only lasted a couple minutes, during which I was apparently unconscious. Later that night, when I went to sleep—“

“You were unconscious?” Rodney demanded, alarmed. 

“Oh, for like, a minute,” John said, “it wasn’t a big deal, they said my brainwaves just registered as asleep. Apparently that was what it took to initialize the device.”

“But you were unconscious,” Rodney said. 

“Sure,” John said, pouring two cups of coffee. Cosmo had begun to adjust to John more often being the one who was awake enough to feed her in the mornings, but during his absence he noted that she’d forgotten, and was asking Rodney again. He fixed their coffees and handed one to Rodney, bending to kiss his cheek. “For, like, a minute. Then that night when I was asleep I had a really long, really vivid, really detailed dream where I was in a room with myself and my other self told me all kinds of things that there’s no way I could have come up with out of my subconscious.”

Rodney was holding the coffee cup and staring at him blankly. John got the cat food out and was immediately mobbed by Cosmo as he set about re-conditioning her to give him all her affection because he was the more reliable bearer of food. It was a hearts-and-minds campaign, only guaranteed to be more effective because it was actually just stomachs. The best part was how long it would probably take Rodney to notice, and how betrayed he’d look when he finally did.

“You had a conversation with yourself,” Rodney said slowly, with careful emphasis on each word like he expected one of them to be corrected. 

“Exactly,” John said. “And in this dream I was wearing my SGC uniform, since that was what I’d been wearing all day. But my other self was wearing almost the same uniform, except there were a couple of crucial differences. One is that it was black, not green. Two, the rank insignia were silver maple leaves instead of gold.” He paused. 

“That means nothing to me,” Rodney said. 

“Come on,” John said, putting the cat food can back into the refrigerator. “You work for the Air Force.”

Rodney shook his head. “Leaves don’t ring a bell,” he said. 

“He was a Lieutenant Colonel, Rodney,” John said, his disgust partially affected but partially real. Come on, that one was pretty basic; it was just willful ignorance that Rodney didn’t know it. How could he work for an organization if he respected it that little?

“That’s higher than a major,” Rodney said. “I know that one.”

“Yes,” John said, slightly mollified. “And thirdly, instead of the SGC logo on the sleeve, he had one that was a kind of, a winged horse coming out of a Stargate chevron, and now I know that what it said across the top was Atlantis. He was the military commander of the expedition.”

“So where is Atlantis?” Rodney asked. “Sam wouldn’t tell me.”

“The Pegasus Galaxy,” John said. 

Rodney blinked. “You mean the Pegasus Dwarf Irregular Galaxy?” he asked. 

“No idea,” John said. 

“That’s in the local group near Andromeda,” Rodney mused. “I’d have to look up how far away it is but it might be reachable on the Prometheus or the Daedalus in a not-ridiculous amount of time. I mean, like, weeks or months instead of years.”

“You can gate to it,” John said, “but it’s an eight-chevron address.” 

“That’s impossible,” Rodney said, half-smiling. “You can only dial seven chevrons.”

“See,” John said, “that’s what they told me, but when I repeated what other-me said, Daniel Jackson started jumping up and down and freaking out. So I guess it’s possible, or at least plausible.”

“No,” Rodney said, “it’s really not, see— I’m actually the world’s foremost expert on that technology, as it happens, and I can tell you that…” He trailed off, staring blankly, and John waited a patient moment just as he had with Carter, and sure enough, Rodney’s mouth hung open a moment and his eyes refocused and he said, “Wait,” and snapped his fingers a bunch of times and turned around and ran out of the room, kiwi fruit boxers and all.

John still hadn’t gotten a chance to tell him how he knew about the kiwi fruit boxers in the alternate universe.

 

 

That was all John saw of Rodney for the next few hours. Today was to be his first day back at his usual job, and he was feeling sort of oddly nervous about it. Should he be still pretending to be slightly injured? He had a letter from one of the SGC doctors (on just plain Air Force letterhead) pronouncing him fit for work, and he’d already cleared his return over the phone, but it was going to seem weird to them that he was fully recovered. But he also wasn’t much of an actor and wasn’t going to try to pretend to be hurt. 

He put his uniform on and stopped by Rodney’s apartment to kiss him goodbye. Rodney was still wearing only his underpants, and it took him too long, as usual, to look up and see John, and when he did he didn’t really notice him, so John waited patiently another few minutes. Finally the second half of the double-take came, and Rodney stared at him. 

“What the— are you—“ Rodney sputtered, shoving his laptop off onto the couch and standing up. 

“Goin’ to work,” John said. “I’ll be home around midnight.”

“What, now?” Rodney shook his head. “I thought you— don’t you at least get a day off?”

“Nope,” John said cheerfully. “It’s okay, I’d only get lazy if I had too many days off.” 

“You,” Rodney said, but he didn’t have any more words, and after a moment he continued in a much different tone. “You look really hot in that uniform.”

John laughed. “Maybe if you’re extra good I’ll wear it for you later,” he said. He kissed him goodbye, and had to work a little to finesse himself out of the kiss instead of getting pulled into something more afterward. _God_ Rodney was hot. Especially in the ridiculous fruit underpants. God. 

Handcuffs. Definitely handcuffs. _Oh. Hmm._ He considered it, smiling to himself on his way out to his car. Yes, definitely handcuffs, later. 

 

They were skeptical, but put John back on active patrol duty, apparently satisfied with his doctor’s note. The paperwork was still going through on his disability, and it just hammered home how much clout somebody at the SGC had— they’d paid him a re-enlistment bonus in straight cash up front, no contingencies, no conditions, no nothing, and it was now sitting its pretty way to his next five mortgage payments, thanks very much. So the police department could take their sweet time with his paperwork. He still wasn’t going to say no to the money, because who knew what else life was planning to throw at him (his car, he noted, even after Rodney’s weird surreptitious stalker repairs, was on perhaps not its last legs but next to last, surely— if the transmission went he wasn’t putting any more money into it, that was for damn sure), but it wasn’t desperate. 

His welcome back present was getting a whole shift with Rachel. And for the first time, he was smacked pretty hard with the anticipated downside of his stroke of good fortune: not being able to tell her a damn thing. 

They had plenty to talk about with her latest relationship drama, though, and her pointed and astute questions about what Thomas had seen at his sleepover. The hours flew by, even with the usual bullshit of people behaving badly and people who were probably good people but currently at their worst, and paperwork and bad coffee and stale doughnuts (cliche for a reason) and so on and so forth. 

“And you really can’t tell me anything about why the Air Force so badly needed you in particular, but only one weekend a month,” Rachel said after a long comfortable silence. The shift was nearly over, and they were waiting for the next shift to check in with the switchboard before they turned for home. 

“Really can’t,” John said. “I mean— it’s just that I have a particular skill that almost nobody has, is what it boils down to. But what they need me to do isn’t all that dangerous or time-sensitive. It’d be so boring to explain anyway, really.” 

“Mm-hmm,” Rachel said, eyeing him. He’d let her drive. He didn’t know why, they’d nearly died four or five times. But he supposed there was something to be said for living dangerously now and then. 

John was realizing he wasn’t any better at keeping secrets than he had been last time he’d been in the Air Force, and he was going to have to remember the habit of just changing the subject and blithely ignoring conversational cues. “Yeah,” he said. “Cash re-enlistment bonus, though, so really, I am not easily going to regret it.”

“Cash,” she said. 

“Up front,” John answered. “Helps a whole lot with the, you know.” He waved a hand. “Everything.”

“Man,” she said, “you’ve been broke as a joke for as long as I’ve known you, it’d sure be nice to have that change.”

“Yeah,” John said, “it’s real damn nice. If it keeps up I might be able to get a real car sometime before the current one kills me.”

“Shit,” Rachel said, “that’d be nice.” 

The radio crackled, summoning them back in, and John responded. He held on surreptitiously to the door handle as Rachel swung the car around, not giving her the satisfaction of visibly rattling him. 

“Thomas keeps talking about how much fun he had at your house, by the way,” Rachel said. “He was enchanted with your nephew P.J. I think it really tickled him pink that you have a black nephew.”

“Y’know,” John said, “P.J.’s a handful, but he’s all right.”

“Oh, sure,” Rachel said. “Kid like that, he’s bound to be a little spoiled. If he hangs around with you enough, though, you’ll set him right.”

“I’ll see if I can’t get my brother to host them all for a sleepover some time, though,” John said. “It might tickle Thomas even more to meet my incredibly rich and powerful black sister-in-law.”

“Oh,” Rachel said, “it sure would.” She sounded a little wistful. 

“Adele’s pretty great,” John said. “You’d probably like her all right.” 

“Oh yeah,” Rachel said, “she sounds like she’s really something.” She was smiling. “Thomas was really enchanted by how happy you and Rodney looked, though. He just kept coming back to it, the two of you, and they came and jumped on your bed, and Mister Rodney was so confused and thought he was the cat and tried to pet his head.”

“Rodney did think he was the cat,” John said. “Keep in mind, though, Rodney’s never really even been around kids before, he’s never had a trio of small boys wake him up at quarter past six on a weekend morning. I’m sort of amazed he was as good-humored about it as he was. I’d actually figured he’d go hide in my apartment with the cat until the fur stopped flying.”

“He seems to have turned out to be pretty patient,” Rachel said. 

“Well,” John said, “like a lot of people who protest that they’re not good with kids, he got over it once he realized that actually kids are just people, who maybe don’t know some stuff yet but are basically just people.”

“He really seems like a good guy,” Rachel said. 

“I think he really is,” John answered.

Neither of them said anything for a few minutes, paying attention to traffic and the radio chatter, but in the next lull Rachel said, “It’s just really nice to see something go _right_ for you, John.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> I am weak, weak weak, and am crossing over with Two-Body Problem. Ideally, you don't have to dive into the Wall-O-Text-And-Whump that is that story to know what's going on; it should be self-explanatory. TBP is my canon-compliant series, and OP is my what-if with the same characters and a crucial piece of history changed. Staying married a little while longer and having a kid got John out of the Air Force in time not to get sent to McMurdo, while staying in Siberia a little longer made Rodney flip his shit and refuse to spend any more time in secure facilities; without John in the chair and without Rodney directly on the project, they couldn't make the leap and discover where Atlantis was, and so the SGC never sent the expedition. (I'm giving too little credit to Daniel Jackson but it's my A/U and I'll do what I want to.)


End file.
